News Detail

Instead of balanced budget, Dems push through new spending

8/4/2015

On Monday, August 4th, Senate Democrats rammed through multiple bills to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, while offering no cost saving measures, according to State Senator Dave Syverson (R-Rockford).

“First they passed a budget that was unbalanced by around four billion dollars, now they’re trying to spend even more money,” said Senator Syverson. “This is irresponsible, it’s dishonest, and it’s unconstitutional.”

Senate Democrats passed a poorly conceived property tax freeze that didn’t contain any mandate relief or local reforms that could save communities money.

“State government can’t continue to force costly mandates on local governments and then cut off their source of income,” said Senator Syverson. “The only thing this will accomplish is to force local communities to layoff police and firefighters and cut services.”

The bills would also force the state to take over payments for Chicago Public School’s sorely underfunded pension funds, adding almost $190 million in new bills for the taxpayers over the course of two years. That, in addition to a last minute education bill, would create around $270 million in new spending.

“There is a simple concept that the Democrats still can’t seem to grasp, that you can’t fix a budget deficit by spending even more money,” said Senator Syverson. “The taxpayers are sick and tired of this. It’s long past time for Democrat leaders to come back to the table and start working on a balanced budget and much-needed reforms.”